


in an age of darkness light appears

by carrieevew



Series: in these words I want to hear a heartbeat [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Season/Series 06, Speculation, The 100 (TV) Season 6
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 10:26:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19130152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carrieevew/pseuds/carrieevew
Summary: Josephine decides to have some fun while she's got Bellamy all to herself and Clarke finally resurfaces.





	in an age of darkness light appears

**Author's Note:**

> here i was, all ready to write a little fluff, when this thing refused to let me go.  
> now, this isn't a direct follow-up to [a ghost in this burning sea](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18989926) because i'm enjoying canon way too much to just ignore it, but it is related and all that happened to Clarke there, happened here as well. am i making sense? i hope i do and that my convoluted explanation won't scare you away.
> 
> title from _[Age of Man](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wd9te6ZQXpQ)_ by Greta Van Fleet.
> 
> enjoy!

Bellamy wakes up with a sharp intake of air, his mind fuzzy and it takes a moment for him to realise that he’s laying in the reclining examination chair they saw in the video, his hands and feet shackled with just enough room to keep his circulation going. A few moments of struggling tell him that he won’t be able to get out of this by himself.

He tried to focus, blinks to clear his mind and then he remembers—Clarke, pressed against the wall, his hand on her face, something stinging the side of his neck and then he’s on the floor, unmoving, and Clarke is leaning over him, telling him— _Josephine_.

He struggles again, harder, more desperate.

“You’re only gonna hut yourself and I need you focused,” comes a voice to his right and his head snaps to look at her. Really look at her.

There’s a smile on her face and this look in her eyes, and he can’t believe that it took him this long to realise something was wrong.

“I’d offer you the same thing I did John but something tells me you won’t be as receptive,” she says and it takes him a while to get over the fact that ever her voice sounds wrong and focus on her words, before he realises she’d talking about Murphy. But that’s a worry for later.

“What the hell do you want from us?” he spits out, eyes never leaving her as she saunters around the lab. She does a little pirouette and turns to look at him.

“Come on, Bellamy,” she says with a condescending smile and he grits his teeth. He hates how his name sounds in her mouth.

“You seem like a—relatively bright guy, I’m sure you can figure it out, if you just thing a little,” she goes on and raises her bandaged hand up, palm open towards him and Bellamy sees a faint black stain on the bandage. _Nightblood_.

He narrows her eyes at her but she just smirks triumphantly.

“There you go, I knew you had it in you.”

“I’m not going to tell you anything about the nightbloods,” he spits out but she only snorts, unimpressed.

“Yeah, I didn’t really expect you to. Besides, I don’t really need you to, not if I can just get your doctor to tell me how to make more.”

Now it’s Bellamy’s turn to snort.

“Do you really think Abby is going to help the people who killed her daughter?” he asks, hoping she doesn’t notice how hard it is for him to actually say those words.

She gives him a look.

“I find that with the right incentive anyone can be convinced to do anything. And it’s not like I plan on telling her what happened. With her drug problems, she’s just gonna end up relapsing and completely useless.”

“That’s where you come in,” she said, coming closer to the chair and leaning over so that she was face to face with Bellamy. “I mean, John’s good enough but I need someone who can tell me even more about her, how she was. And apparently, you and Clarke were working together but you weren’t actually together, right?” she asks, her eyes narrowing curiously.

Bellamy stays silent, his jaw clenched and she finally moves away with an annoyed huff. Bellamy watches as she walk up to the medical cabinet and pulls a syringe with a clear fluid. His mind flashes the images from the Eureka video they watched and his body goes rigid.

She walks over to him and he flinches when she starts to push the sleeve up. She just rolls her eyes when he starts fighting his restraints again, trying to avoid the shot.

“Relax,” she tells him and looks at him like he’d a complete idiot. It chills his blood to see that look at Clarke’s face.

She grabs his elbow and pushes it against the armrest, limiting his range of movements drastically.

“I’m not gonna use the serum on you, what use would I have of you if I wiped your mind? But I do need you to talk to me and that’s just gonna help you open up a little bit.” Her voice is cold and devoid of any sympathy and Bellamy just goes slack.

Even when things between the two of them were at their worst, Clarke never sounded like that, never looked at him like that. he lets his head land in the headrest and feels his eyes fill with tears. She lets go of his arm but he doesn’t move.

“I was hoping you’d be more fun, seeing how you manhandled me before.” Her voice sounded farther away and when Bellamy opens his eyes, he sees her a few steps away, the syringe still in her right hand, but her left now on her clavicle, her fingers brushing her neck gently.

“I heard those bruisers were from you, too. That’s a little kinky, isn’t it? You guys like it rough?”

Bellamy’s glare hardens and she just laughs.

“No, wait, you have a girlfriend, don’t you? Does she know how you feel about Clarke? Did she notice how you looked at her? Because if it’s anything like you did when you still thought Clarke was alive,  then I don’t think she’s very happy about that.”

She taps her chin with the syringe and lets out an exaggerated gasp.

“That’s who I should befriend, isn’t it? I mean, isn’t she gonna be grateful that I just removed her competition?”

Bellamy huffs in anger ad yanks on the restraints and she just looks at him with vicious satisfaction.

“Touched a nerve there, didn’t I?”

Bellamy still doesn’t say anything and her shoulders drop. She lets out a long-suffering sigh, rolls her eyes and walks up to him again. The way she behaves, she reminds Bellamy of the kids from Alpha Station, whose parents had high-ranking jobs and friends on the Council—the one he used to bust past curfew when he was still a cadet, who always used to talk down at him cause they thought they lived in a world where they owned the Ark and all the service people in it.

_You used to think Clarke was one of these kids._

He flinches at the thought and feels a tear roll down the side of his face. If she notices, she doesn’t say anything. She just puts her hand on his elbow again and moves the syringe so the cold metal of the needle touches his skin.

And then her hand jerks.

Just a little bit and Bellamy wouldn’t even notice, except the needle scrapes against his skin and pricks his ar.

And then her hand jerks again and again, until it starts shaking and she drops the syringe to the floor. She grabs her right hand with her left and brings them both to her chest. She looks so utterly confused and—scared?

Suddenly, both her hands go to her head, the heels of her palms pressing on her temples and her moth drops open, as if she were screaming, only no sound comes out. Not until she falls to her knees, her head drops down and she cradles it in her hands and now she starts screaming. Wailing, like she’s in incredible pain.

For a split second, Bellamy in frozen in place but when a choked sob comes out of her mouth, he doubles his efforts to get out.

Bellamy thrashes against the restraints, tries to rock the chair but it’s no use, it’s bolted to the floor. He doesn’t care. Nor does he even notice that he rubbed the skin off his wrists and the blood is dripping on to the floor.

He doesn’t care If she was telling the truth and Clarke was really dead. Doesn’t care that for a second after she introduced herself, he wanted to snap her neck and was actually grateful for the paralytic that stopped him. All he cares about is that this is still Clarke’s body and she is suffering.

“Stop it! Stop it! STOP IT!” she screams and he can hear that she’s crying.

“Clarke”

He calls out again and again but there’s no reaction, like he’s not even there. Bellamy feels his throat starting to hurt as he shouts Clarke’s name but his voice is drowned by her cries.

She curls in on herself, her finder tangled in her hair, clenched so tightly her knuckles are going white, tugging at her hair—

***

The walk down to the Mount Weather main gate took longer than Clarke expected and was more harrowing than she cares to think about.

With each step she took, the corridor got darker and the voices of all the people she killed and hurt grew louder and louder until they were deafening, but none of them worse than _his_.

_You called me every day for six years and then you left me to die in the fighting pits._

It was only her father’s presence by her side that kept her from falling down and drowning in the despair.

Clarke walked for what felt like days until she started to notice something glimmering in the distance. She walked a little faster and a little braver then, until the glimmer became the wall of frosted glass. All Clarke could see at first was a blurry figure, moving from one side to the other. She put her hands on the glass, rubbing at it in hope that she could clear it but that didn’t help. Not until she noticed something else move in the background and she realised that it was a person, too.

The glass slowly cleared up the more she focused on trying to look behind it and finally it was clear enough that she could see that it was Bellamy, tied down to the same chair that she knew Josephine woke up in, again and again, always in a different body.

Clarke’s hand clenched to a fist as she watched in horror that Bellamy was struggling against the shackles.  She stood frozen in place, not knowing what to do, watching Josephine pull out a syringe and toy with Bellamy. She couldn’t hear the words but from Bellamy’s expression she could tell that Josephine was going in for the kill.

Finally, she saw her hands—Josephine’s hands—put the syringe against Bellamy’s skin and without Clarke even realising, her hand punched the glass in front of her. It had no effect on it but Josephine’s hand jerked sideways.

Clarke punched again.

***

Clarke retracts her arm further and punches the glass again, harder. She knows her father disappeared the moment she threw the first punch but she doesn’t mind. Somehow, she know that it’s actually a good sign.

She can see that she’d smearing her own blood all over the glass and that her fist is in terrible condition—the skin on her knuckles bruised and bleeding, the fine bones of her hand close to breaking. In some nebulous way she’s even aware that it is painful and it should bother her but she just keeps punching because she can also see that it is _working_.

The glass remains intact but Josephine is on the floor now, crying in pain and if nothing else, it gives Clarke the satisfaction.

And then she hears it.

 _Clarke_.

Faint and beyond distorted at first but it’s still her name. It grows louder with each blow she lands, Bellamy’s voice clearer as it reaches her through the wall and finally she notices a small crack in the glass, stares at it momentarily, blinking in shock.

She can’t see Bellamy but she can hear him, his voice getting hoarser and more frantic, so she hits the glass again.

And again.

_And again._

_And—_

***

And then she’s no longer hitting anything. She’s kneeling on a hard floor, her hands in her hair, her head tucked so low she’s nearly touching her stomach with her forehead.

She can hear herself scream in pain, except—

Nothing hurts.

Clarke lets go of the hair and raises her head. The light above her head is shining so brightly that it blinds her, as if she just left some very dark place. There’s blood rushing in her ears and she blinks quickly, trying to focus on her surroundings.

“Clarke!”

The sudden shout surprises her and her head snaps up.

Bellamy is still tied to the chair, his hands red and glistening, tiny puddles of blood underneath him, but he still struggles.

“Bellamy,” Clarke whispers his name and suddenly, he goes very still, his eyes going wide and he just stares at her.

Clarke scrambles up to her feet and rushes to his side, her hands grabbing the restraints, hoping to open them up.

“Clarke?” he asks in disbelief. She looks up at him and new tears pool in her eyes when she sees the sorrow, pain and despair in his face. She nods lightly and despair gives way to shock and then hope.

“Clarke,” he says again, his voice breaking his hand reaching around to grab hers.

Clarke wraps her fingers around his and she feels his hand turning so he can hold her properly. She wants to say something but doesn’t really have the words. She not even sure that there are words to describe how it feels to finally see him wither own eyes again, to touch his skin and feel how warm and rough it is under her fingers.

So they just look at each for a while until she squeezes his hand and Bellamy winces in pain. Clarke drops his hand quickly and looks down at it to assess the injuries  but he’s not helping, his fingers wiggling and reaching to hold her again.

“I’m sorry,” Clarke says and tries to open the restraints again but only gets more frustrated when they refuse to budge. “I’m _so_ sorry.”

Bellamy lets out a tired huff of humourless laughter.

“What could you possibly have to apologise for?”

“I saw—I know what she did, the people she hurt. And I just—“

“Hey!” Bellamy cuts her off sharply and catches her hand again.

“This isn’t on you. None of this is your fault, Clarke,” he says firmly but his expression softens when she finally meets his eyes. There’s something in the way that he looks at her that Clarke doesn’t yet understand and can’t name but it makes her melt inside.

His hand in hers is sticky with his blood and Clarke take another look at it. The wounds aren’t deep but the require some tending to, so she starts looking around the lab for a way to get him free.

Only she can’t see the lab anymore. For a split second her sight goes completely black.

And then she feels a head-splitting pain, like someone just stuck a large needle in the back of her skull.

The pain finally subsides and her vision clears, and Clarke notices she moved away from Bellamy, who is looking at her with concern.

“Clarke, what’s going on?”

Before she can answer, there’s another stab of pain and for a moment, she can’t see or hear anything.

When she comes back this time, she’d even further away from Bellamy when her own shriek dies in her ears.

“Clarke, what the fuck is happening?!” Bellamy is frantic now, his body twisted in the chair as if he could reach out to her and she wants to tell him to lay back or he’s going to hurt himself but she can’t speak.

Another sharp stab in her head and it feels like someone is trying to rip her soul out of her body. She knows she must be screaming now but she doesn’t register it. But she does hear Bellamy calling her name, so she wills herself to speak.

“I don’t think I can hold on much longer,” she croaks.

“Clarke, please, hang on!”

She looks at him, wishing she had the strength to make her body go to him, to touch him one more time. Clarke opens her mouth to at least say goodbye but nothing comes out. Not does anything go in and she can’t breathe anymore. Her vision becomes spotty from the lack of oxygen and the lab around her disappears.

She feels like she’d about to faint but that never comes. Instead, she blinks and there’s a long dining table in front of her.

She’s back in Mount Weather again.

***

Bellamy calls her name once again, watching in horror as Clarke staggers around the lab, her arms flailing around like she has no control over them.

“Clarke!”

Her head snaps up and Bellamy grows cold. This isn’t Clarke anymore.

“Wrong number,” she snarls, back straightening up she brushes her hair away from her face and smiles at him in that sick way that makes his skin crawl. “Try again later.”

“What the fuck did you do to her?!” Bellamy shouts but she ignores him.

She walks over to the medicine cabinet and starts rifling through it instead.

“Looks like we have a stowaway,” she mutters and Bellamy knows she’s talking to herself. “No matter, we can deal with that.”

She finally finds whatever she was looking for and comes back to Bellamy, yet another syringe in her hand.

“This does change my plans, though. I don’t suppose you’re gonna be much cooperative, now that you’ve seen your princess again,” she says and plunges the needle into his arm, not waiting for an answer.

Bellamy knows that he should be fighting now, trying to get out, but he feels so tires and so sleepy, that he just can’t.

The last thing he can think of before he drifts off is that everything is going to be okay.

Because Clarke is _alive_.

**Author's Note:**

> but wait, there's more! or, there will be. i have the next part actually written down but like the true mental pensioner that i am, it's on a piece of paper and refuses to just transfer itself onto the computer. can you believe?  
> i'll try to get it all done as soon as possible, so be on the look out!
> 
> i hope you like this! thank you so much for reading. comments and kudos will be welcomed like manna ;-)  
> and come find me on tumblr @[carrieeve](https://carrieeve.tumblr.com), we can cry and scream together.


End file.
